a young woman on an ongoing quest to savor the sweetness of life through words, art and science

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Category Archives: Dessert For Your Ears

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC
― Kurt Vonnegut

You’ll notice by now that I’m kind of in love with music. Aside from chocolates, bacon, cabbage and rice (not all of them together–YUCH!!!, but perhaps, in the same meal!), you can say my other addiction is music, which gave birth to my addiction to dancing.

Perhaps the reason I love quotes so much is the same with the reason, as Ray Bradbury said, we read: to find people like ourselves. To find someone who thinks like us. And the painter Agnes Martin said something that rang true with me about music.

Art is responded to with emotion … and the best art is music — that’s the highest form of art. It’s completely abstract, and we make about eight times as much response to music than any of the other arts.

My addiction has also been beautifully explained in this YouTube video by AsapScience. Apparently, music does work like drugs since it releases dopamine in our brains.

For more musical drugs, check out the singer Bobby McFerrin’s beautiful art of James Brown’s song, I Got The Feelin’

Credits go to Maria Popova of brainpickings.org again! Check out her complete post on Agnes Martin and The Science of How Music Enchants The Brain. Also, one of my newest internet haunts has been zenpencils.com! Check it out for amazing art and inspiring words. But don’t worry ’cause I’ll probably posting more of the artist/owner Gavin’s stuff here as well.

About time. Finally got a new internet connection which allows me access to wordpress full time–I am hoping! It hasn’t been loading for the longest time. Add my own tendency to procrastinate and the site’s stubbornness, and you get no posts.

This mini post is gonna be my second DFYE, which I hope to continue. Today’s collection will take you back through nostalgia and younger, simpler and more carefree days. Or at least they did for me. Romance, rain and a good cup of coffee.

The book is a compilation of actual questions asked by schoolchildren which were answered by scientists, celebrities, authors and people like Bear Grylls, Jeanette Winterson and Philip Pullman. It’s a pretty good read! It awakens the child and curiosity within-the wonder at this world we live in.

“Why Do We Have Music?”

answered by Jarvis Cocker, musician and broadcaster

“…every society on Earth has music so there must be some point to it. In fact, some scientists think that humans were singing and making music long before they learned to speak.

Perhaps it was our very first form of communication. And it can still be a way of communicating without words today: think about ‘happy’ songs and ‘sad’ songs. They both use the same notes (there are only twelve, you know) and yet are so different in mood. ‘Ah, that’s because of the words,’ you might say. But no. Try listening to the radio in a country where you don’t speak the language. You’ll still be able to tell the happy songs from the sad ones. It’s the SOUND of the music that tells you. How does it work? I don’t know–but it does. It’s kind of magic and I think that’s why we have it.

It’s magic and we can have it whenever we want it. When you put one of your favourite songs on and get a sort of shivery feeling behind your ears and down the back of your neck (even goosebumps sometimes) that’s one of the best feelings there is.”